The PlayStation Plus free titles and Xbox Live Games with Gold have been announced for December 2017. It’s time to pit the collections against each other to see which console comes out on top with December’s offerings. Welcome to PS Plus vs Games with Gold!
Let’s take a look at the contestants. First up, the PS Plus Instant Game Collection.
- Darksiders II: Deathinitive Edition (PS4)
- Kung Fu Panda: Showdown of Legendary Legends (PS4)
- XBlaze Lost: Memories (PS3)
- Syberia Collection (PS3)
- Forma 8 (PS Vita & PS4)
- Wanted Corp (PS Vita)
Next, here are the Xbox Games with Gold that you can grab on Microsoft’s platform next month.
- Warhammer: End Times – Vermintide (Xbox One)
- Back to the Future: The Game – 30th Anniversary Edition (Xbox One)
- Child of Eden (Xbox 360, Xbox One w/ backwards compatibility)
- Marlow Briggs and the Mask of Death (Xbox 360, Xbox One w/ backwards compatibility)
PS Plus Free Games December 2017
We’re leaving out Until Dawn: Rush of Blood because it was available last month too. While it’s still available through the end of the year, we’re leaving it out of the new games being added this month. Darksiders II: Deathinitive Edition is a fun game, and considering we’re bound to get news of the sequel soon, it’s a fair addition. The downside is that it’s an old remaster of a game originally released on PS3. If you’ve been a Plus member for a while, the first game was free back on PS3 a few years back.
Kung Fu Panda: Showdown of the Legendary Legends is is a Smash Bros clone, limited only to the characters from Kung Fu Panda. Reviews on the title are middling at best, and it’s really quite the throwaway entry this month. It might be understandable if it were one of the PS3 titles this month, but as much as people complain about getting indies over triple-A games, this one is even worse. It’s a low quality licensed game rushed to meet the third entry in a kids movie franchise.
Xblaze is likely to only appeal to a very particular audience. Syberia is a franchise that got progressively worse through the series, with the PlayStation versions widely considered to be the worst available. Forma 8 could potentially be a pleasant surprise, if people are willing to give it a chance, but it’s definitely a Vita game with very simple visuals (though it will be available on PS4 for Plus too). Wanted Corp has a single review on Metacritic, giving it a 5 out of 10 from an Italian gaming site. Sometimes obscurity is worse than low scores.
Xbox Live Games with Gold December 2017
Games with Gold gets the game with far too many sub-titles, Warhammer: End Times- Vermintide. We reviewed it as an enjoyably average game, but it’s really not something worth writing home about as the headliner for December’s Games with Gold. Back to the Future is a great Telltale Games adventure from long before their formula began to grow stale. It’s well worth experiencing whether or not you’re an avid fan of the movies.
Child of Eden reviewed well, and is an intriguing game with trippy visuals that meld music and motion, similar to something like Rez. it reviewed quite highly but sold poorly when it was first released, so this might breathe some new life into it. Marlow Briggs is a third-person hack and slash game that reviewers described as a “brain-dead budget thriller.” If you’re looking for mindless fun, this might be a good game, but once again, it’s not a major title that can get players hyped up and excited.
Which Lineup is Better?
Outside of Rush of Blood returning from last month, Sony’s leading title here is Darksiders II, which is sad considering that it’s a current gen release of an old PS3 title. Nothing else in PlayStation’s lineup is of particular interest, especially if you only have a PS4. PS3 and Vita widen the scope, but for what? I used to try to play every Plus title, thinking I was getting some kind of “value” out of it, but time is valuable too. The Xbox games fall into the same issue of being more of a waste of time than a real added value, with the exception of Back to the Future. Players may also find some fun with Warhammer.
I have to give the edge to Xbox Games with Gold this month. When I look at all of the entries and see what I would value spending my time on, I put Back to the Future highest on that list (that might be because I’ve already Platinumed Darksiders II twice). Plus may have more games, but being spread across more platforms, there aren’t as many specifically for PS4. Even if there are more games, more middling entries just means more wastes of time instead of being full of worthwhile experiences that you may have missed.
Wondering how January’s lineups will fare next to one another? Come back next month when we pit the newly announced lineups against one another in PS Plus vs Games with Gold. Do you agree with our verdict? Which lineup do you think is better?
